Declan McCullagh <[email protected]> wrote: Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:33:47 -0800 From: Declan McCullagh To: [email protected] Subject: [Politech] Dozens of federal agencies track Web visitors illegally [priv]
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6018702.html Government Web sites follow visitors' movements January 5, 2006, 4:00 AM PST Dozens of federal agencies are tracking visits to U.S. government Web sites in violation of long-standing rules designed to protect online privacy, a CNET News.com investigation shows. >From the Air Force to the Treasury Department, government agencies are using either "Web bugs" or permanent cookies to monitor their visitors' behavior, even though federal law restricts the practice. Chart: Federal Web tracking Some departments changed their practices this week after being contacted by CNET News.com. The Pentagon said it wasn't aware that its popular Defenselink.mil portal tracked visitors--in violation of a privacy notice--and said it would fix the problem. So did the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. "We were not aware of the cookies set to expire in 2016," a Pentagon representative said Wednesday. "All of the cookies we had set with WebTrends were to be strictly (temporary) cookies, and we are taking immediate action." WebTrends is a commercial Web-monitoring service. [...remainder snipped...] --- Some examples: Agency Name Cookie Type Expires Hostname --------------------------------------------------------- Air Force Webtrends.com 2016 af.mil Commerce Department Statcounter.com 2011 ogc.doc.gov Defense Department Webtrends.com 2016 defenselink.mil Election Assist. Comm. Own 2007 eac.gov Energy Department Statcounter.com 2011 www.er.doe.gov General Services Admin. Own 2035 apps.fss.gsa.gov Office of Personnel Mgmt Own 2037 leadership.opm.gov Treasury Department Own 2035 ots.treas.gov _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
